3dh is or I should say was, (more on that later) the company that I animated for in January and February, and it was a really great start. There were some very cool people that I worked with and all of them very talented at what they did. (not many of them look happy because of how that particular week was going and that the annoying over enthusiastic new guy is bugging people at their desks to take pictures of them.)
The one in the red shirt and Navy blue spring coat is my roommate Tim Moen. He's also a character designer. He's very heavily inspired by Milt Kahl in his design work. He's fun as a roommate because we can geek out about animation all evening when there's nothing else to do. And I get to ask helpful questions about design and some history of animation that I'm fascinated by. I still consider myself relatively green to my chosen industry of animation so I'm always playing catch up, but I'm learning. So I'm very grateful to have him as a roommate even if we don't necessarily agree on movies. He's into romantic comedies and action/spy movies and hates epic fantasies like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia. Now I'm ok with romantic comedies if they're good, but I'm not crazy about action movies that don't involve anything fantastic like giant robots or dragons or super science or anything else we can think of to make things out fo the ordinairy. I love Lord of the Rings.
And we're often disagree on what points of an animated movie are good ones or not. Mostly because we're interested in very different things, he's constantly analyzing style and how things look and read graphically, and I'm more about acting and story telling choices and movement that I can feel. Just two points on where we differ on things. It seems to be summed up by his worshipful admiration for Milt Kahl, and my constant following and stalwart love for Glen Keene. We both think that both of these two brilliant animators are awesome, but we hold preferences to one over the other. Different tastes I suppose, and we'll have plenty more spirited discussions about animation to come on this.
Anyway, the next the one with the shades and khaki jacket is Andy Seredy. One of my two supervisors who were assigned to test me when I was interning at 3dh in September. He's one of the better riggers in this entire region of the country! He's got a strong background in video games and took up a job here doing animation because he's always wanted to that instead of rigging. He's also usually the one who's always distracting everyone with his new "discoveries". Whether it's about guns, politics, quantum mechanics, or just some goofy hollywood rumor he'll announce it to the office whenever he reads it. It certainly keeps things entertaining.
Next one is the guy in glasses, gotee, and the long sleeved shirt under short sleeved shirt, Chris Slavik, although everyone just refers to him as "Slavik" because there's more than one Chris and Slavik just sounds cool. He's the fastest animator in the studio as well as the lead animator and has been there longer than most other employees. He's also the other guy who reviewed me when I interned here. Both of them said I had potential and learned quickly so I was hired on their recommendation. I owe them a lot and still have a lot to learn from them.
The next Guy is the one in the black shirt and baseball cap, Render Eric. The only part of his name that I know is Eric. Since he's one of 4 Erics in the studio we refer to him as Render Eric since he was the studio's Render Wrangler until he moved into animation. He's considered a Jr. animator like me because he's new to animation but it's what he wants to do. He's pretty knowlegable as a tech. guy, but animation he needs work on, but he's getting better. We were in the same cubicle for the first 2 weeks I was there, so I got to know him pretty well and we talked in our off time. He's a good guy and he speaks spanish. I hope to learn a few phrases from him since this is Florida and there's a lot of Cubans and Peurto Rican's and other people who speak Spanish here. Comes in very handy to be able to talk to them if they don't know english.
And the last guy I'll talk about in this post, who seems to be daydreaming about something pleasurable, is Jesse, the Asian sensation of the studio. Andy and the other guys love making asian jokes to him since he never get's angry. Whenever the subject of Toyota cars or kung fu movies comes up they ask Jesse what techniques they use or something like that. We're all joking of course and Jesse's cool about it so it's all in good fun. In truth he's taller than I am so he breaks a few stereo types that way. ^_^ Anyway, he's our Texture artist and being the only one is pretty stressful. He had help in the past but all those guys either quit or got Fired because they couldn't keep up. Jesse's our lone man in that department so he's got a pretty important job. And he's one of the more social guys in the studio as well. And that's saying something because just about everyone in the studio is pretty much a social butterfly, at least in the studio they all are.
So there's a bit about who I work with for those interested. I'll post a few more pictures and some sketches I've been working on in my down time here in Florida. Check you later.
-Nick
